Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday (March 15) that AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine was safe and that the government was very confident about using it in its vaccination push.
Asked if he could reassure people that the shot was safe, Johnson said: “Yes I can.”
“In the MHRA (Britain’s medicines regulator), we have one of the toughest and most experienced regulators in the world. They see no reason at all to discontinue the vaccination programme,” he said.
“So we continue to be very confident about the programme and it’s great to see it being rolled out at such speed across the across the UK.”
Germany, Italy, Spain and France were among the latest countries to temporarily halt administering the vaccine over reports of blood clots after Cyprus, Thailand, Denmark and Norway suspended their Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs rollout.
In response, AstraZeneca said it had carefully reviewed the data on 17 million people who received doses across Europe but found “no evidence of an increased risk” of blood clots in any age group or gender in any country.